sarah parsons and crape myrtle
Sarah Parsons, a Ph.D. candidate in entomology at North Carolina State University, visits one of her crape myrtle study trees. The tree is surrounded by minimal local vegetation, as is common of many trees in the urban environment. According to Parsons’ findings, this would be a tree where one would expect to find fewer Orius insidiosus, a predator of the crapemyrtle aphid (Tinocallis kahawaluokalani). Orius numbers increase with more dense vegetation distributed locally around the tree.